Commission's votes on land should be open

Posted: Tuesday, January 30, 2007

It might, as Athens-Clarke County Commissioner David Lynn contends, be "standard government practice" for Georgia's local governments to vote on real estate purchases behind closed doors. That doesn't, however, make it a "best practice" - or even a legal one, for that matter.

For years now, Athens-Clarke commissioners have held secret votes on land purchases, with the first official public disclosure of those votes coming when minutes are prepared, a process that can sometimes take weeks or months.

During the past two years, the practice of deciding on land deals behind closed doors has meant county taxpayers haven't known until after the fact how their elected officials have decided to spend more than $7 million in public money. The largest single expenditure was a $5.8 million outlay for 65 acres in December 2005. There also was a $1 million expenditure for a downtown parking lot which is slated to become a parking deck, a $165,000 purchase of 2.7 acres on Danielsville Road for a fire station, $91,000 for 8.2 acres on Commerce Road as a buffer for Sandy Creek Park, and a $26,000 outlay for land on Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway to expand the North Oconee River Greenway.

Certainly, there is a legitimate reason - one which clearly is in the public interest - for a local government to keep secret its interest in acquiring land. Obviously, if the county's mere interest in buying land was disclosed in public meetings, owners of property in the area of the contemplated purchase could command a premium price, given the county's openly stated need for the land.

State law addresses that very circumstance, excluding "(m)eetings when any agency is discussing the future acquisition of real estate" from provisions of the state's open meetings statute.

The operative word in that phrase is, of course, "future." In the case of the Athens-Clarke County Commission, it appears commissioners are going behind closed doors to approve an immediate or near-immediate land acquisition, as opposed to discussing an acquisition that's being contemplated for some point in the future.

To be fair, there is some disagreement with regard to how the state's open meetings law should apply to purchases of land by local governments.

A 1998 opinion from the state attorney general's office contends that while discussion of land acquisition can be held behind closed doors, any vote must be held in open session. That opinion still holds today, a spokesman for the attorney general's office said last week.

On the other hand, Athens-Clarke County Attorney Bill Berryman told this newspaper last week that, in his reading of the law, "you can both discuss and vote" behind closed doors.

The Georgia Municipal Association, which provides technical assistance to local governments across the state, also disputes the attorney general's opinion, with a GMA spokeswoman acknowledging last week that "there's definitely disagreement on the policy."

But, even giving Athens-Clarke commissioners the benefit of the doubt on the proper reading of the statute, it's still disappointing that our local government, when confronted with a choice of being more transparent or less transparent in connection with its handling of public money, would take the path tending to keeps its citizens in the dark.

In the absence of any perfectly clear guidance, the Athens-Clarke government - which justifiably prides itself on its commitment to openness and inclusion - should rethink the way it handles votes on real estate acquisition.